The Perils of Pauline

The Perils of Pauline is a 1914 American melodrama film serial shown in weekly installments, featuring Pearl White as the title character. Pauline has often been remembered as a famous example of a damsel in distress, although contemporaneous reception and some analyses hold that her character was more resourceful and less helpless than the classic damsel stereotype, and she was a considerable influence on early female audiences and attracted much critical attention therefore. Pauline is menaced by assorted villains, including pirates and Indians. Neither Pauline nor its successor, The Exploits of Elaine, used the cliffhanger format in which a serial episode ends with an unresolved danger that is addressed at the beginning of the next installment. Although each episode placed Pauline in a situation that looked sure to result in her imminent death, the end of each installment showed how she was rescued or otherwise escaped the danger. Despite popular associations, Pauline was never tied to railroad tracks in the series, an image that comes instead from contemporaneous films such as Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life.